Led Zeppelin concert off until at least September

Dan Sloan

2 Min Read

TOKYO (Reuters) - British rock band Led Zeppelin enjoyed jamming together again last year in a charity concert but won’t have another session before September at the earliest, lead guitarist Jimmy Page said in Tokyo on Monday.

Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page poses for photographers before a news conference to promote the band's album of live performances entitled "Mothership" in Tokyo, January 28, 2008. REUTERS/Michael Caronna

A successful reunion show in London in December rekindled hopes of a world tour, but Page said that singer Robert Plant’s tour with U.S. country singer Alison Krauss is keeping him busy for now.

“I can assure you the amount of work that we put into the O2 (concert), for ourselves rehearsing and the staging of it, was probably what you put into a world tour,” Page said.

But, “Robert Plant also had a parallel project running and he’s really busy with that project, certainly until September, so I can’t give you any news.”

Page, in Tokyo to promote a greatest hits release, painted a happy picture of the reunion.

“It was exhilarating, fantastic, every week was a week to look forward to,” he said. “We did the show and it was great.”

The band, formed in 1968 by Page, Plant, bass guitarist John Paul Jones and drummer John Bonham, became arguably the world’s biggest rock group by the early 1970s.

Their fourth album, released in 1971, included their most famous song, “Stairway to Heaven,” while the band has sold an estimated 300 million albums worldwide.

The group decided to break up shortly after Bonham died in September 1980, although Page and Plant collaborated at times over the years.

Plant, Page and Jones performed together in London before about 20,000 fans on December 10, with Bonham’s son Jason on the drums.

When the concert was announced, the Internet site selling tickets crashed with applications, while the possibility of a new world tour had fans around the globe excited.

Page said after many years the song indeed remained the same.

“That is what was so thrilling really — to come together after all this time and find that there was so much chemistry and so much electricity involved in these four characters.”